Despite a residual cynicism about the man’s motives, Palmer-Jones was impressed. It was not easy for Anderson to ask for help. Yet he said:

“Surely you, of all people, can trust the police not to make a mistake.”

The magistrate’s quick, almost hysterical response showed, for the first time, the extent of his anxiety.

“Have you heard these birdwatchers talk to each other? It’s like another language, as if they belong to a secret society. When I listen to Adam talking on the telephone to one of his friends, I can’t understand a word. How could an outsider persuade one of these fanatics to talk to him reasonably and rationally?”

“And as a fanatic myself, you feel that I may have more success?”

“I want to know what happened. Because Adam is unhappy and because you appear, in some way, to be a friend of his, I’m asking for your help.”

He stood up and spoke with stilted formality, as if he were in court. He had already given away too much.

“If you do agree to act for me in this matter, I will of course pay all your expenses and any fee you consider to be reasonable.”

In a mocking voice, talking almost to himself, Palmer-Jones said:

“I could extend my list considerably with unlimited resources.”

He stood too, and said quietly in an off-hand; dismissive way:

“I’ll think about it and let you know.’

Chapter Two

It did not take George Palmer-Jones long to decide that he would accept Anderson’s offer. He was not even sure that there was a decision to make. He wondered for a short time if it was sensible to become involved, but knew that the speculation was pointless, because he already was. He would accept Anderson’s offer as an investment against boredom. It seemed sometimes that a fear of boredom had shaped his entire life; he felt that he was haunted by a childhood of unrelieved tedium.

He had been brought up in a small town in Herefordshire, only a mile from the Welsh border. He was the only child of a moderately prosperous local solicitor. His mother had died when he was an infant, but the town seemed peopled by elderly female relatives who enjoyed the sacrifice of caring for his father and himself. The countryside in the district was magnificent, but until he was old enough to explore it himself he hardly saw it. With his wife’s death his father had become preoccupied with the trivial events of the town, the safe everyday events. George still remembered with dread Sunday afternoons in the gloomy parlour, the identical spinster aunts, his father lifeless and grey, becoming animated only when the aunts began to gossip about petty misdemeanours, property and wills. If the talk approached scandal his father would withdraw, bring the conversation to a close, and George would be left with a tantalizing sense that he had missed something of interest. There had been a clock in that parlour with a loud, distinctive tick. When he experienced the panic of approaching boredom George could still hear the clock ticking in his head.